In each episode of our podcast “Life in Seven Songs,” we ask the world’s brightest minds and leaders: What songs tell the story of your life?
In 1978, a 17-year-old Jay Blakesberg sold his photos for the first time, to a small weekly newspaper in New Jersey. For a whopping $15, the paper printed his shots of a San Francisco-based jam band called the Grateful Dead.
Blakesberg didn’t know it, but those were the first of thousands of his images that would go to print, making him one of the most celebrated photographers in rock and roll and the preeminent recorder of the Grateful Dead.
“It was one of those sparks early in your life that hopefully turns into an inferno,” he told The Standard’s Sophie Bearman. “And for me, it happened with the Grateful Dead in a big way, starting very young.”
Over the next four decades, Blakesberg captured some of San Francisco’s most memorable rock and roll moments, from Bono’s spray-paint job at Vaillancourt Fountain to John Fogerty’s day in court for plagiarism against Creedence Clearwater Revival, along with countless legendary portraits shot in the city, featuring the likes of Beck, Joni Mitchell, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
In this week’s episode of “Life in Seven Songs,” Blakesberg details his life as a rock photographer, sharing the songs that have defined his long, strange trip of a career.
The same year he sold those photos to the New Jersey newspaper, Blakesberg spent a snow day listening to the Dead’s seminal experimental album “Wake of the Flood.” The experience, he said, changed his life forever, sparking a desire to be part of the culture around the band.
“The genie was out of the bottle, and we never wanted to put it back in,” he said. “And we saw that there was a whole world in front of us. And for me, that world was no longer in suburban New Jersey. I needed to get to San Francisco.”
In his teenage years, the closest Blakesberg was to San Francisco came via his drug dealer, a man from the city who sent him 2,000 hits of LSD by mail. Little did Blakesberg know, the San Francisco Police Department was already on his trail and sent a tip to police in New Jersey, where he was arrested at 19.
After a stint in the state penitentiary, Blakesberg moved west for college, studying photography and filmmaking at Evergreen State in Washington. After an internship in the Bay Area, he settled in San Francisco in 1985, shooting the Dead all the while.
By the ’80s, popular music was reaching an experimental supernova with the introduction of synthesizers and drum machines. As the Dead entered a new phase of experimentation in their live shows, Blakesberg’s world began to change radically. One album, above all others, became his lightning rod. The Talking Heads’ 1980 album “Remain in Light” is “truly one of the most psychedelic records and just so amazing to listen to on LSD,” Blakesberg once told the band’s leader, David Byrne.
By the late ’80s, Blakesberg became a mainstay for Rolling Stone magazine after capturing his career-defining shot of Bono spray-painting the Vaillancourt Fountain at the Embarcadero Center. From then on, he shot superstars like Radiohead, Alanis Morissette, Johnny Cash, and Pearl Jam, while remaining a consistent photographer of the Grateful Dead.
His life is one of endless adventure, and for that reason, he continues to circle back to one song: Bob Dylan’s “Tangled up in Blue.”
“It’s a song about a person and his life and his love,” he said. “And there’s so much information in that song, but there’s so few answers, right?”
Listen to Blakesberg’s full playlist on Spotify and find a transcript of the podcast episode here. Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at lifeinsevensongs@sfstandard.com.